Facebook Creates Team to ‘Beam’ Internet Everywhere on Earth

A design for a possible solar-powered plane to help Facebook deliver the Internet to remote areas.

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Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that the company is launching a Connectivity Lab, a team of scientists tasked with bringing the Internet to remote places on the planet using new techniques, including beaming it down from the sky.

Zuckerberg said the team of about a dozen people includes scientists in the field of aeronautics and communications. Facebook has hired new employees from organizations like NASA, the National Optical Astronomy Observatory and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Facebook also said it hired five people from Ascenta, a UK-based company that developed the world’s longest-flying unmanned solar aircraft.

The Connectivity Lab is part of Zuckerberg’s previously announced Internet.org initiative, which aims to bring connections to parts of the planet where the Web is unavailable. He said achieving that goal will mean inventing new technologies, and said the lab will work with drones, satellites and lasers.

Earlier this month, Facebook was in advanced talks to buy Titan, a New Mexico-based maker of solar-powered drones that might one day be able to beam the Internet down to the planet’s surface, allowing access in remote places on the planet.

A video posted on the Internet.org website Thursday shows an aerial view that looks as if it were taken from the cockpit on a plane.

A voiceover asks viewers to imagine when the entire planet gets the Internet. “It doesn’t get twice as good, it gets, like, a bazillion times as good,” it says. Then, a solar-powered plane appears in the bottom of the screen, evidently beaming the Internet down to what looks like a mountainous landscape.

The plan, according to a post on the Internet.org site, is to transmit an Internet connection by sending infrared light beams to the earth, using satellites for rural areas and solar powered aircraft for more suburban areas that lack Internet connections.

The Connectivity Lab, a completely in-house effort, stands in contrast to recent acquisitions Facebook has made. On Tuesday, the company said it had agreed to Acquire Oculus VR, a maker of virtual reality goggles, for $2 billion. And in February, it announced a $19 billion deal to acquire WhatsApp, a mobile messaging service.